After the financial industry’s crash in 2008, taxpayers footed a bill for hundreds of billions of dollars for bank bailouts. In the wake of the crash, the U.S. government failed to prosecute any of the top bankers responsible for it. And, last December, the G.O.P. passed a tax cut that showered more wealth on bankers than any other sector. In so many ways, the sector responsible for a global economic meltdown has been rewarded, not punished, for their misconduct.

Apparently, this lack of consequences isn’t good enough for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. After the U.S. House of Representatives passed S. 2155, dubbed the “Bank Lobbyist Act” by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, on May 22, the Chamber released a statement applauding the passage of the banking deregulatory bill (which was subsequently signed into law by the president). The Chamber pushed hard for this bill: it issued key letters to both the Senate and House, and hosted an event earlier in the year with acting CFPB director Mick Mulvaney and Small Business Administrator Linda McMahon calling for “bank relief.” S. 2155, which reduces oversight over many banks and rolls back a number of the consumer protections enacted in the Dodd-Frank Act’s reforms, is just the sort of giveaway to Wall Street that the Chamber has consistently advocated for.

As is the Chamber’s M.O., advocating for this bill was couched in the language of “restoring small business lending” and abolishing “one-size-fits-all regulations” that were supposedly hampering small community banks. The problem is that that’s not an accurate reflection of the country’s economic landscape prior to the bill’s passage, nor is it a good description of what the bill actually does.

The reality is that the “Bank Lobbyist Act” reduces oversight on 25 of the 38 biggest banks. It strips away many critical consumer protections, including provisions to prevent racial discrimination in lending. It removes many of the guidelines keeping banks from engaging in the same sort of risky gambling activity that led to the crash just ten years ago. And, of course, when banks gamble with their deposits, those are funds that are not being used for the loans people need to buy a home or start a business. Allowing this sort of risky banking practices is setting up American taxpayers to potentially be on the hook for another bailout on their dime should the financial sector crash again.

As for those supposedly hamstrung banks the Chamber is supposedly selflessly looking out for? They were already doing just fine before the bill passed. The industry reaped a record $56 billion in net income in the first quarter of 2018. Even the small banks, whose financial wellness the Chamber prioritizes in its PR materials, were hardly suffering; loan balances at community banks rose significantly more in 2017 than across all banks. And the Chamber claims that small business owners have been hobbled by a lack of availability of credit in recent years, but according to the Federal Reserve’s September 2017 report, credit availability for small businesses has greatly improved in recent years and reached a stable point. It seems community banks and small businesses are just a smokescreen to make this Wall Street giveaway, the true goal of the bill, more palatable.

After the 2008 crisis, bankers did just fine. It’s the American people who suffered, losing countless jobs, savings, and homes. For the U.S. Chamber, it looks like risking a repeat of the Great Recession is worth it for the sake of Wall Street lining its pockets.

One of the most important legal tools that exists to protect against corporate wrongdoing is allowing harmed individuals to band together to sue as a class or collective action. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that employers can use forced arbitration clauses in employment contracts to block employees from bringing collective and class action lawsuits against their employer. As a result, employers will have free rein to force employees to sign arbitration agreements that waive the right to bring collective or class actions as a condition of employment.

This is a devastating blow to workers’ rights because it is difficult for workers to prove violations of the law such as wage theft or discrimination if they cannot band together with co-workers to show a pattern of abuse. Class actions are also more efficient and can be the only feasible way to bring small dollar claims since the cost of bringing a case can outweigh the monetary harm to any one person but the wrongdoing was widespread. Last week’s SCOTUS decision, Epic Systems v. Lewis, will herald in an era of further restrictions for workers’ access to the courts and drastically weaken the ability to achieve justice in the face of accountability for employers’ wrongdoing. Unsurprisingly, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s hands are all over this misguided decision.

The Chamber filed a “friend of the court” amicus brief in support of the employers, arguing that the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) does not protect against forced arbitration as the employees’ legal team argued it does. It makes sense that the Chamber is so invested in advocating for weak employee protections; this fits in with the Chamber’s longlegacy of hostility toward workers’ rights. The corporations that make up the Chamber’s membership have a financial interest in employers’ unmitigated ability to dictate all the terms of employees’ contracts.

The Chamber’s allies in the corporate sphere are already jumping at the opportunities provided by the Court’s decision. Shortly after the decision was announced, employment firm Ogletree Deakins released an automated ‘DIY’ tool for companies to include forced arbitration clauses in their contracts.

The Supreme Court’s ruling is alarming to civil rights and consumer rights activists who worry that the decision will limit employees’ access to justice in order to fight a whole host of corporate wrongdoing including discrimination, wage theft, and sexual harassment. Just this week, in light of the Epic decision, Chipotle petitioned a court to exclude more than 2,000 persons from an ongoing wage theft lawsuit because the company argued the workers signed arbitration agreements that prohibited them from joining any class actions.

In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that “[i]t would be grossly exorbitant to read the FAA [Federal Arbitration Act] to devastate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other laws enacted to eliminate, root and branch, class-based employment discrimination.” She also called on Congress to pass legislation that would affirm the right of employees to join class actions to oppose discriminatory employment contracts such as violations of equal pay for women.

Public Citizen is committed to doing just that by working to make sure the Arbitration Fairness Act is passed, which prohibits forced arbitration for employment, consumer, antitrust or civil rights disputes, and also by spearheading corporate campaigns to call on individual companies to voluntarily end the use of forced arbitration clauses. If the Arbitration Fairness Act were to receive a vote—something that’s not likely in the current Congress, unfortunately—you can bet that the Chamber’s voice would bellow in opposition as it has done in the past.

As Public Citizen noted in its own friend of the court brief that we filed in support of workers, access to the courts is an essential right for workers and consumers to in standing up to corporate abuses. The Chamber, it seems, would prefer to let those abuses run rampant.

It will likely not surprise you that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is not too fond of unions. The ability for workers to collectively bargain and improve the conditions of their employment is a threat to the bottom lines of the corporations that make up the Chamber’s membership. The Chamber is motivated to block the power of unions by its desire for corporations to have the ability to keep wages low for their workforce, to limit workplace safety protections, and to make sure that workers can’t fight back.

What you may not know, however, is that the Chamber also opposes other, non-union labor initiatives. Enter worker centers. Worker centers are groups of working people from certain sectors who do not have the legal right to collectively bargain, but are nevertheless an important force in advocating for the rights of workers and their communities. Worker centers might organize for better wages and benefits, or they might educate the public about injustices such as racism in the labor market. They do not have the same legal status as a union, but they provide a valuable safety net to workers who do not or cannot belong to a union.

Apparently, the Chamber is outraged by even that level of worker protection. They have taken up the mantle of impugning worker centers with the ultimate goal of doing away with them. In April, the Chamber released a report entitled “Worker Centers: Union Front Groups and the Law.” In it, the Chamber lays out the argument that worker centers are “union front groups”—that is, that they are secretly unions going by another name and should be regulated the same way unions are. This is transparently absurd: worker centers exist specifically to serve populations that are not served by unions, and they lack the power to collectively bargain, which is one of the defining attributes of unions. The Chamber would have us ignore this clear distinction because it is inconvenient for its narrative.

As is so often the case, this effort to dismantle the power of worker centers by the Chamber mirrors a similar effort by the GOP. House Republicans have vowed to make the same changes to worker centers’ legal classification as the Chamber is advocating for.

Of course, if the Chamber and its buddies in the GOP truly felt that worker centers are secretly unions, they could say that centers should have all of the same collective bargaining power as unions do. But of course they won’t do that, because these arguments are in bad faith: the Chamber and its allies know full well that worker centers are merely a minimal line of defense for workers who have nothing else to protect them, and are unable to tolerate even that meager level of worker protections.

It should not surprise us that the Chamber takes such consistently anti-worker stances. However, it actually may surprise the corporations that are members of the Chamber and proclaim to care about their workers’ lives and well-being. For instance, McDonald’s and Gap both having sections on their websites about respecting the human rights of their workers. These companies should take a long look at the Chamber’s appalling record on workers’ rights and withdraw their funding and support for the Chamber.

This Earth Day, we hope you will take some time to join with us in reflecting on the effect our lifestyles have on the planet and to make positive changes. We would also like for corporations that claim to be environmentally responsible to have that same introspection and take forward-thinking action.

Earlier this month, Australian miner BHP Billiton finalized its decision that it would be withdrawing from the World Coal Association over differences on climate change. Notably, it also announced it would remain a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Previously, the miner has been an outspoken advocate for the Paris Climate Agreement and was publicly considering leaving the Chamber over the Chamber’s lobbying against the Agreement. Even a brief glance at the Chamber’s shameful history on environmental issues reveals what a mistake BHP has made in staying with the Chamber.

The Chamber habitually throws around its more than $272 million in corporate-donated money and its significant lobbying weight to pursue a climate agenda beholden to the fossil fuel industry and Big Oil. It has frequently stood in opposition to environmental safeguards like the Clean Water Rule, the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, and the Stream Protection Rule. It has brought a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to block implementation of the Clean Power Plan. In fact, the Chamber sued the EPA 15 times during a recent three-year period.

Most notoriously, the Chamber has routinely attempted to block efforts to combat climate change. In 2009, the Chamber infamously called for a “Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century” to put climate science on trial. It has also funded a now-debunked study on the Paris Climate Agreement that dramatically overstated the potential costs of the Agreement and ignored its benefits. President Trump later cited this sham “study” as part of his rationale to pull out of the Paris Agreement.

BHP’s website has an entire section on the environment, with subsections devoted to “climate change” and “water” among other topics. Its continued support of the Chamber, however, is in effect condoning the Chamber’s constant attacks on the environment.

If BHP is truly committed to engaging on climate and green energy issues, it should take a consistent stance in which organizations it will refuse to do business with. A number of companies have already left the Chamber over its environmental policies including its anti-climate advocacy. No company that proclaims to care about the environment, sustainability, public health or the planet should remain a member.

This is why we call on the many corporations that fund it to #DropTheChamber. This Earth Day, please sign the petition to tell companies like Gap, Pepsi, and Disney to make a better decision than BHP and quit the Chamber and leave its fossilized thinking behind and put our planet on a better path to the future.

This morning, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce held its “Tax Cuts at Work” event to celebrate the tax legislation that passed in December, which gave a massive windfall to the wealthy and to profitable corporations, as well as rewarding tax dodgers that had stockpiled money overseas. The event description states that attendees gathered to “discuss the benefits of the recently enacted tax reform legislation,” which is code for a lot of self-congratulatory back-patting since the Chamber lobbied heavily for its passage. In fact, a recent Public Citizen report found that the Chamber hired 115 lobbyists on tax issues in 2017—the most hired by any one organization.

This Chamber event is part of a coordinated PR blitz that President Trump, the GOP leadership, and their cronies have been engaged in since the bill’s passage that would have the American public believe tax cuts for corporations actually spur wage growth and job creation. Not only has trickle-down theory been disproven in the past, but the current data show that almost all of the real effects of the tax cut involve making the extremely wealthy even wealthier. That’s why people call it the Trump Tax Scam.

In a recent blog post, the Chamber trumpeted that because of the new tax law, “job creators are sending less of their hard-earned money to Washington,” which of course means there will be less revenue for healthcare, education, and other important government investments like infrastructure. However, the post also gave the false impression that it is primarily small businesses that are seeing the tax cuts’ benefits rather than giant corporations. The reality is that the tax cut’s benefits for small business owners are complicated and confusing, and has different treatment for different types of small businesses, meaning some could possibly end up paying more.

The newly-launched resource, Trump Tax Cut Truths, makes clear where the money from the tax cuts is actually going. The answer? To giant corporations and the extremely wealthy, mostly. Take a look at some key findings:

Graphic: Americans for Tax Fairness

The Chamber’s public relations materials may be able to cherry-pick anecdotes of a couple of small business owners whose stories suit its narrative of reinvestment, but it’s plain to see that the overwhelming bulk of the tax cut’s benefits are going to shareholders, not workers. The stock buybacks and higher corporate profits mean very little to the average employee. A recent National Bureau of Economic Research report found that the majority of U.S. households own no stock, the richest 1% own 40% of stock, and the richest 10% own 84% of stock.

Previously, we wrote about the Chamber’s million dollar ad campaign and its “Tax Reform Now” website, back when the Chamber was lobbying the get the tax cut package passed. Both of those promotion efforts were deeply misleading in exactly the same way as its current messaging around the tax scam: pretending it was about helping working people and small businesses, rather than the corporations and Big Business executives it was created to benefit.

This law is having exactly the effect it was designed to have: making Donald Trump and his family, Republicans in Congress, and their billionaire donors richer. A recent report from the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy found that the richest fifth of Americans will receive 71% of the benefits of the tax law in 2018, with the largest benefit going to the richest one percent. The U.S. Chamber can try all it wants to hide that fact, but the numbers don’t lie.

Instead of letting ourselves fall for the Chamber’s misleading portrayal of what the tax changes have actually done, we should end tax breaks for wealthy CEOs and reject efforts by the GOP to pay for their charade by making deep cuts into Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and education. Take action today to demand that Congress repeal the #TrumpTaxScam.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce really, really does not like the idea of an independent and effective Consumer Financial Protection bureau (CFPB).

That’s the key takeaway from its recently-released CFPB “reform” agenda. The agenda’s preamble claims that the Chamber’s proposed restructuring is “an effort to support the agency’s mission to protect consumers,” but a look into their proposals shows that this is mere smoke and mirrors. The Chamber’s true goal is to defang the CFPB and roll back consumer protections.

The Chamber’s recommendations would drastically change the way the bureau does its work—mainly by stripping the agency of its independent leadership and funding. And, other proposed changes would threaten the public’s access to information, weaken the bureau’s system for citizens to make complaints about specific companies, and would put less emphasis on enforcement.

Currently, the CFPB’s funding is handled by the Federal Reserve. That was deliberate in design; the CFPB must be independent from Congress in order to ensure that it represents consumers first and can’t be guided toward partisan ends. The Chamber’s proposal would put Congress in charge of the CFPB’s purse strings, allowing the congressional majority to control the bureau’s funding in a way that will effectively keep it from issuing safeguards to protect consumers.

The Chamber’s agenda also recommends changing the structure of the CFPB to be run by a bipartisan commission, so that, like other commissions, partisan fighting could stop the bureau from implementing new protections. The current structure has worked well and has been upheld by the courts—a federal appeals court ruled in January that the single-director structure of the bureau is constitutional and that the director cannot be fired by the president without cause. As with bringing the bureau’s funding under congressional control, this measure is designed to allow the Chamber’s friends in the GOP to prevent the bureau from exercising meaningful regulation of financial institutions involved in predatory or abusive practices.

Critically, the Chamber’s stance on the CFPB very closely mirrors that of the Trump administration. Recently, the CFPB released its semi-annual report, the first under Acting Director Mick Mulvaney, a Trump loyalist and House Freedom Caucus co-founder who has previously called the bureau a “sad, sick joke.” As Public Citizen has documented, Mulvaney’s report is essentially a roadmap for the dismantling of the CFPB that Mulvaney has desired for a long time. The CFPB’s report includes Mulvaney’s four recommendations for Congress to gut the bureau and render it ineffective. Like the Chamber’s recommendations, Mulvaney’s proposal includes provisions to make the CFPB’s budget subject to appropriations from Congress. As Lisa Gilbert, Public Citizen’s vice president of legislative affairs, put it, Mulvaney’s proposals are a “knife in the heart” of the CFPB.

Throughout its agenda, the Chamber hides its intentions behind PR-friendly buzzwords like “access,” “choice,” and “reform.” But scrutiny of the Chamber’s proposals makes it clear that what they really want is to let corporations escape oversight and accountability, and to let an overly partisan and corporate captured Congress keep the CFPB from making real advancements for consumers.

But the bureau’s independence from Congress and partisan politics is essential to its effectiveness. Only free from Congress’ control can the CFPB put the needs of the American people ahead of interference from an uncooperative majority focused on putting the needs of their corporate donors first.

Rather than allow the CFPB to continue its essential work to protect consumers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce would instead like for its Big Bank friends have what they’ve been clamoring for: an end to the bureau’s independence and control over its actions. After all, when you represent predatory Wall Street banks, you can’t just let some watchdog agency stop you from lining your own pockets, no matter how much harm you do to consumers.

But, we will continue to work to stop the Chamber and the Trump administration from getting their way. We’ll defend the CFPB against restructuring that would prevent it from doing its job: to ensure people, not bank profits, are protected. Take action today to stand with us.

Previously, we have explored the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s extremely partisan, secretive approach to election spending. Under CEO Tom Donohue, in the 2016 elections, the Chamber spent nearly $30 million, 100 percent of which went to benefit Republican candidates. Among groups that do not disclose their donors, the Chamber was the second largest spender in the 2016 elections (after the National Rifle Association). Along with its spending habits, the Chamber’s staffing also tells a story of how wildly partisan the organization is. This is of course very different than the wide-ranging perspectives of the Main Street businesses the Chamber purports to represent, which represent every political stripe and ideological bent in the nation.

In a new report, Public Citizen analyzed a database of 157 current and former Chamber employees who previously held jobs that could be characterized as partisan in nature, such as working for an elected official or an outside group with a strong ideological bent. Of these, more than 90 percent worked for Republican or conservative entities, and fewer than 10 percent for Democratic or liberal entities. These Chamber employees worked for 72 GOP members of the U.S. House and 47 GOP U.S. senators.

We tallied 73 different right-leaning entities that have fed employees to the Chamber, including Republican White Houses and cabinet secretaries, the Republican National Committee, right-leaning political action committees, conservative media, and Republican members of Congress.

Republican or conservative entities for which U.S. Chamber employees have worked include such familiar names as Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity and other Koch brothers groups, and the NRA, as seen in this map:

For comparison’s sake, here is the much less busy map of Democratic or liberal entities for which U.S. Chamber employees have worked:

Given this lopsided, tangled web of associations with conservative actors, it is safe to conclude that the Chamber is not an apolitical organization looking out for your local mom-and-pop stores, as it masquerades. Instead, what the Chamber advocates is usually the preferred policies of the Republican Party and those in its sphere. And indeed, the Chamber’s activity has lined up with the GOP’s legislative agenda with uncanny frequency.

At U.S. Chamber Watch, we work to draw attention to the fact that the U.S. Chamber is behaving in a partisan manner and focused on dismantling the public protections that small businesses (and regular Americans) need.

One important way to do this is to ensure that the many companies that fund the Chamber understand what they stand for. Many have consumer-facing brands, and need to be conscious of their PR and public associations. These brand-sensitive companies would never want anyone to think of them as supporting the Koch brothers or undercutting climate change, worker health, and financial safety policies.

We aren’t naïve, and we don’t expect these companies to make decisions solely out of the goodness of their hearts. But what they should do is recognize the partisanship of the Chamber and the danger it could pose to their bottom lines. They know that their ideologically diverse customer bases may abandon their brands if their ties to such a partisan organization are discovered. These companies should stop funding the Chamber.

The revolving door of staffers from the GOP to the Chamber of Commerce is yet more evidence that it is not actually a trade group benignly representing business interests as it claims to be, but rather a partisan organization pushing for a conservative agenda. You can read our full report, titled “The Chamber of Partisanship: An Investigation into the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Dense Web of Political Connections” here.

If you drive on highways (or walk and bike underneath their overpasses) you already know that maintaining our roads is critically important. But infrastructure means more than roads, highways and bridges. It means schools, hospitals, water and even the internet. Infrastructure is one of the most essential services a government can provide for its people, and failure can mean catastrophe. This year, the Trump administration and its ally the Chamber of Commerce have infrastructure reform at the top of their agendas, and both the White House and Chamber have released plans on the topic in the recent past. And just like we saw last year with healthcare and taxes, “reform” is code for big-business giveaways that leave American communities, especially low-income communities, out in the cold. Here are three key proposals from the Trump and Chamber plans:

Deregulation and Steamrolling Public Protections

The most predictable proposal present in both the Chamber’s plan and that of the Trump administration is deregulation (they call it “eliminating regulatory barriers”). Both plans argue that deregulation will cut costs without sacrificing quality. There are two problems with this argument. One, unsurprisingly, is that deregulation often compromises both quality and safety. The second problem with deregulation of infrastructure projects is that we would give up the benefits of safeguards while not at all likely to save any of the promised money, either.

In the case of the Trump plan, the most significant deregulatory risk is to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) which protects species and habitats but also people and communities from polluting projects. And, the Chamber’s infrastructure plan specifically threatens drinking water safety by proposing to roll back the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA’s) ability to veto building permits for projects that negatively impact US waterways, which would increase the risk of water contamination from new highways, dams and pipelines. Its provisions for private leasing of federal lands could also allow pipelines to be built through national parks. Opposing regulation is par for the course for the Chamber of Commerce, which in the past has spoken against the Volks Rule (which strengthens employer obligations to maintain records of workplace injuries and illnesses) as well as other worker-safety regulations like one that protects workers from exposure to high levels of crystalline silica dust on the job. The Chamber even opposes compliance with the Endangered Species Act.

Deregulation will not save money on infrastructure projects because repairing and rebuilding shoddy construction often costs more than simply building it right the first time (sometimes a lot more). Consider a 1960’s construction project in Florida to help control flooding from the Kissimmee River. The original project did not serve its intended purpose, instead becoming stagnant and ultimately polluting the river, killing almost all plants and wildlife in the area. Whereas it cost $194 million in today’s dollars to build it, cleaning up the mess will cost at least $1 billion. That wouldn’t happen today with our current regulatory system for infrastructure projects, that requires robust environmental review.

Not only would steamrolling environmental review rules do unacceptable damage to our environment, these disasters become problems for taxpayers to deal with. Without regulation, communities would be left like those of the Kissimmee River project– faced with a poorly-done project with benefits that never materialize, now consuming more than five times its initial cost simply to reverse the damage it has done. Truly, deregulation would lead to the worst of both worlds.

The Threat of Public-Private Partnerships

Another commonality between the Trump and Chamber plans is a focus on private investment and public-private partnerships. The Trump plan follows the Chamber’s lead by expanding the use of Private Activity Bonds (a key financing tool for public-private partnerships, or “P3s”), allowing privatization of federal infrastructure, and reducing or eliminating constraints to P3s in transit, transportation, provision of water, and even the Veterans Affairs department. The Chamber and the Trump administration claim that these P3s will lead to high-quality services and projects that cost less and give the public more choice, but these claims are erroneous.

First, P3s are not cheaper since private contracts are notorious for their hidden costs. Some of them are to the local government – like when Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels had to pay a private company $447,000 of taxpayer money to offset “losses” from when the governor waived tolls for motorists escaping a massive flood. Some of them are to the public, like when a Chicago consortium operating the city’s parking meters required the city to raise rates in parts of the city by as much as 800% over four years. Private companies typically charge 59% more than public entities to provide utilities like water (in Coatesville, PA the increase was 282% between 2001 and 2015). When a private company began charging tolls on the MLK Freeway in Virginia for the first time in decades, the governor had to step in and renegotiate the deal after some residents received bills totaling more than $10,000. Private companies expect revenue, sometimes an unrealistic amount, and if they don’t get it, they’ll take steps to recover the difference.

The Chamber claims that cities will be able to choose among competing bids, so they can just avoid these bad deals. Well, that may be true in rich areas, but low-income communities won’t be able to offer such lucrative contracts. Some public projects just aren’t profitable on their own. To expect private companies to take a loss in order to help low-income communities is naive. Even if these projects are taken on, expect user fees to be so high that many residents will no longer be able to afford the prices of essential services like water to their homes or the tolls on the roads to their jobs.

This isn’t always true, of course – there are plenty of P3s that do provide services at a discounted cost. Unfortunately, most savings claimed by private contractors are due to huge layoffs and underpayment of wages (specifically, from finding ways to avoid having to pay prevailing wage requirements). That’s what United Water did when they signed a deal to operate Atlanta’s water system in 1999, then proceeded to fire more than half the system’s employees and cut training for the rest. In 2003, the city decided they’d had enough of constant service problems, water-main breaks and even occasional boil-only alerts. They dissolved the partnership.

P3s are supposed to give the public more say, at least – but even this claim is questionable. If the city of Chicago wants to put more bike lanes on its road, they are restricted from making these improvements. Why? Because a private company runs their parking meters, and more people bicycling means fewer paying tolls. The city also has to reimburse the company if they want to close a street (say, for a parade or street fair). The contract went through city council in four days, with no hearings or opportunities for public input. Now, regretful city officials are locked in to the deal. Public-private partnership contracts are also known to contain “non-compete” clauses to protect their profits. That company in Norfolk, VA charging drivers $10,000 in tolls put a clause in their contract limiting the city’s ability to erect or improve “alternative facilities” for drivers who can’t afford such hefty fees. Who exactly has “more say” in these deals? Not the city’s residents.

The bottom line is, the most important thing for a private company isn’t providing high-quality service. It’s not improving the community. It’s not even the well-being of their workers. It’s profit. If other considerations – like safety, pollution, or quality – conflict with profit, expect private corporations to put profit first.

Cutting federal funding

Not only does the Trump administration agree with the Chamber’s mistaken belief that safeguarding public protections isn’t necessary, and that private investment is preferable to public, but they have an additional shared priority for infrastructure reform: they don’t want the federal government to pay for it. The administration’s plan calls for $200 billion in federal investment, but it also calls for $280 billion in cuts to services. That’s a $1.40 loss for every new $1 available, and will lead to massive job losses. State and local governments, used to shouldering 20% of the costs of new infrastructure projects, will now be asked to take on 80%. Worse, under the Incentives Program, even the meager federal funds still available will be preferentially allocated to projects that show strong revenue or revenue potential (i.e. the projects where they are least needed). Some cities will be able to raise the money by increasing state and local taxes, but others will be forced into public-private partnerships to try to make up the difference. Communities too poor to raise revenue through taxation or attract profit-motivated investors face the prospect of simply being unable to afford to fix their broken infrastructure at all. Propaganda from the Trump administration calls this a “$1.5 trillion plan” for infrastructure investment. Don’t be fooled. Most of this money is coming from two places: hypothetical private investors, and taxpayers.

Both the Chamber and the Trump infrastructure plans laud running the government “like a business.” That should alarm you because, to a business, you are nothing more than a revenue-generating customer. But Americans are not the government’s customers. We are its owners. Customers just pay and take what’s available, but owners can demand something better. Stand with Public Citizen and organizations around the country to say: our schools, highways, hospitals, and water are not for sale to the highest bidder. We demand a government that puts people over profits when it comes to infrastructure investments.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Thomas Donohue gave his “State of the American Business” address yesterday, signaling that the trade association and the nation’s largest lobby spender couldn’t be happier about benefits that were handed out to Big Business over the past year, which included record Wall Street profits and a massive tax giveaway.

Unfortunately, many of those gains did not reach Main Street and won’t. And, even though Donahue himself admitted that “the prosperity hasn’t flowed to every community or every household,” he remained undeterred in touting discredited “trickle down” economic theories. His address featured a laundry list of anti-consumer priorities for 2018 that are geared toward maximizing big business’s profits at the expense of public safety and health.

Donahue gushed both about last year’s massive tax giveaway for the wealthiest, as well as the Trump administration’s commitment to undo critical health and safety regulations in order increase corporate profits. The tax handouts for corporations will be paid for by cuts to critical government services like Medicaid, education, and nutrition programs leaving hard working U.S. families decidedly worse off. The push to deregulate and undo our nation’s public safeguards will lead to more tainted food, dangerous products, and unsafe medicines—outcomes that will harm or even kill Americans.

If cutting services that help everyday people in order to pay for tax cuts for profitable corporations and gutting health and safety regulations weren’t enough of “achievements” for the Chamber, it is urging Congress to make massive cuts to the nation’s safety net benefit programs moving forward, which could gravely impact millions of older and underprivileged Americans. And the Chamber is gearing up its fight to help corporations combat shareholders resolutions that give shareholders a say in the management of the companies they invest in and increase transparency in those companies.

In addition, the Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform will continue to work to limit a person’s right to their day in court—benefitting big banks, insurance companies, and massive corporations that seek to close the courthouse doors on consumers who have been defrauded, cheated, or ripped off.

To accomplish all of this, the Chamber is doubling down on siding with Wall Street over Main Street by aggressively recruiting candidates for political office who promise to work on behalf of their overly partisan, Big Business-enriching goals.

Unlike most fair-minded Americans, the Chamber is devotedly against the principle that America succeeds when everyone succeeds, and instead leaves its faith in the failed theory that when “pro-growth agenda succeeds, America succeeds.” Instead of asking what policies will directly help working families, the Chamber continues to pursue policies that limit our access to courts, curtail health and safety regulations, advance trade policies that harm American workers, and side with corporations over investors.

Donohue firmly believes that the “state of American businesses” is strong. Unfortunately, it is at the expense of hardworking Americans and their families.

As for the capital expenditures, an Ars Technica analysis found that unless Comcast goes well above the promised $50 billion, it would actually represent a smaller annual increase in Comcast’s infrastructure spending than in recent years.

Last spring, AT&T’s CEO was very clear what massive tax cuts for his corporation would mean: every billion dollars in savings would mean an additional 7,000 good paying jobs at AT&T. Yet, an August op-ed in the New York Times by the Institute for Policy Studies pointed out that “AT&T enjoyed an effective tax rate of just 8 perfect between 2008 and 2015, despite recording a profit” and during that time reduced its workforce by nearly 80,000 people. It did however find a spare $34 billion for stock buybacks during that time, which serve little purpose outside of increasing value to investors.

The Chamber would have us believe that if we just accommodate the every whim of big business, this time things will be different and the public will be the real winners. History tells a different story and we can see it playing out again right now with Comcast and AT&T’s workforce reductions.